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Why You Should Include Online Into Your Marketing Mix?

Rising Internet Media Consumption
We have to face it. Internet is becoming the very way of today’s communications. From online versions of the national newspapers, to e-government services, the Internet has become one of the main channels of communications. As more and more services and information channels are ported over to the Internet space, we are seeing more and more users adopting Internet as one of their main sources of daily information. Statistics from InternetWorldStats has shown the number of Internet users rising year after year in all the major countries in Asia. In a short time frame of just 7 years, the number of Internet users has increased by many folds!

Country

Internet Users
2000

LatestInternet Users

Penetration

User Growth
(2000-2011)

India

5,000

100,000

8.4 %

2,000.0 %

Indonesia

2,000

39,600

16.1 %

1,980.0 %

Malaysia

3,700

16,902

58.8 %

456.8 %

Philippines

2,000

29,700

29.2 %

1,485.0 %

Singapore

1,200

3,658

77.2 %

304.9 %

Taiwan

6,260

16,147

70.0 %

257.7 %

Thailand

2,300

18,310

27.4 %

796.0 %

Vietnam

200

29,268

32.3 %

14,634.0 %

Source: www.internetworldstats.com – 30th Jun 2011

Figures in thousands

We are expecting these figures to rise in the years that follow and at an exponential rate as all the governments worldwide are gearing their nations to be broadband enabled. With such a huge pool of users in the Internet space, you are missing out an entire group of consumers if you have not yet included online into your marketing mix.

Online Is More Cost Effective, Period.
Compared to TV commercials and Printed Ads, the online media has a handful of unique but extremely enticing advantages such as much higher headroom for creativity and interactivity, and it is very affordable. Online media posses these characteristics because it is virtually free from conventional known restraints such as airtime, page limitations and other nagging constraints that you may have. Let’s face it; producing a decent TV commercial is a costly undertaking involving a rather sizeable crew of expensive professionals and a lengthy production time. Coming up with a respectable printed Ad is not any more affordable either when the costs of paper, printing, copy writing, designers and not to forget production time are factored in.

In fact, the only constant cost involved in all three forms of media is creativity cost, and that’s exactly where online media has the edge. Because there’s no need for expensive professionals, models, printers and other indispensable raw material costs, much of what is pumped into an online advertisement are actually creativity expenses. In that sense, an online advertisement is far leaner and brings much more value for the costs involved.

An Interaction Playground
As opposed to a brief TV commercial and a static piece of printed Ad, online advertisements and branding campaigns can go the extra mile with INSTANT INTERACTIVITY and INFORMATION ON DEMAND, all with a simple mouse click. Be it further branding and product research, surveys, contests or other exercises of similar capacity, choosing online media is the smart choice for both brand and cost effective advertising as minimal administrative support is required to sustain the aforementioned efforts.

Go for Push/Pull than just Push…
Studies have shown that when people go online, more often than not they already have a clear intent on what they are looking to read, research or buy as opposed to print media where all information, including excess and unwanted information are PUSHED out to readers. Most of the time, readers would have to filter out or skip through pages of information that are mostly if not entirely irrelevant to them.

Now instead of just slapping a fanciful design or idea onto lifeless print media or a one-way TV advertisement, both of which are a type of “Push” advertising vehicle, why not have your marketing campaigns come to life and be totally interactive at the same time? From what we’ve mentioned earlier, online media is the only medium that’s capable of taking on a “Pull”, “Push” and even “Pull-Push” role. This is largely due to its highly interactivity characteristic that allows your advertising to go deeper than just a one-off message delivery. The interactivity here can involve diverting a consumer into finding out more about a product or a brand via click through, thereby providing further education for that consumer. This in turn generates a greater interest while leaving behind an assured impression. Competitions, consumer information, surveys, and other marketing related efforts could all be put to greater effect through an online channel.

Start targeting specific audience instead of random hits
Mass media is classified as such because it targets the general public and not a specific group of audience. While you do strike a broader audience with your advertising dollars invested in mass media, the distressing fact is that many of these consumers would end up being the wrong targets. In fact, the “investment to target group ratio” is a lot lower than you might think. This is definitely not an issue with an online tech media such as www.hardwarezone.com®. For a fraction of that allocated advertising budget, you’ll get to target the right group of consumers while being completely kept in the loop with campaign reports.

Accountability of your marketing investment
Every form of advertising is an investment and the most pressing concern for advertisers and marketers alike is an accurate and effective mode of tracking these investments. This leads us right back to online advertising and it’s only through online media where a transparent tracking mechanism can be easily implemented to help you monitor, assess and account for your return of investment (ROI). Once again, full and precise accountability of ROI is something not attainable for print media and TV media, but an online media such as www.hardwarezone.com® gives you this advantage.